Love: Something Else & Mechanism

Forgive the streamy-ness of consciousness here.

Everyone says the word
but it becomes more and more apparent
that we're talking about something else
when we utter it in phrases mocked
by its over-usage elsewhere.
Talk about needed translators. This is serious.
You can bet at least 30 million people let it
go from their lips this second. At least.
Right now
someone is confessing it instead of joy
another it instead of silence
another it instead of lust
and sadly another it instead of sheer wonder.

I had a professor once who said
the problem with the English language,
and hence the whole population of persons who
organize their lives with the English language,
is that we only have one word for it,
therefore we cannot distinguish
appreciation from gut-wrenching connection,
nor biological impulse from that which is breath-taking to behold.
I’m taking this further.
When talking about its presence in relational configurations,
some are describing ownership contracts,
others conflating home, culture and comfort with power and privilege,
still others speaking to an arbitrarily constructed equation based
on the necessity of gendered halfs.

For instance, Anna and I went to this poetry workshop facilitated by
Christina about 3 years ago where we did language games of word association in order to promote the splaying forth of poetry. When Christina called out “love” I wrote down the name of my mate of the time. Anna wrote “tomatoes.”
Let me tell you: Anna’s answer stood alone
in honesty/meaning/attachment-clarity and creativity,
but I thought she was so very silly at the time.

Talk about a language problem. This is serious.
Talk about stunted relational maturity. This is so fucking serious.

So here are my people
limited in speaking what's given
limited in our capacities to build below and beyond this narrow concept
which actually might be, in its multiplicitous variations,
the most vital concept on Earth, at least near that of G-d,
while also attempting to out-source democracy. Mercy.

And so I think we're talking about something else
when we talk about love of country. Is it duty? I suspect that
after listening to the stories of soldiers and impulses
of aspiring politicians.
What is more, when we talk about loving neighbor, we are talking
specifically about responsibility. I've learned that after paying
attention to the texts that get quoted when people are asking
for charity or compassionate attention. We don't love someone
who is hungry on the street, but we love something enough
to practice responsibility in the moment we bend down to give
the leftovers in our hands. I think we love the utopian promise born
of responsibility, or the distraction acts of charity provide in
the face of debilitating suffering, or perhaps we love the people who tricked us into believing that caring for an innocent stranger
actually matters. How about those conversations about loving to witness the flourishing of all people? Perhaps you mean justice.
At least, I mean justice when I'm talking about love,
at least half the time. The other half I'm busy conflating it
with this incredible mystery I cannot describe but
keep aiming for with my poetry, theology, dancing and sex life.

Perhaps we all keep aiming for this incredible mystery
with our worn out, shallow language and
in spite of our knowledge that the aim and language will never
deliver us or set us free or give us security
there's some mechanism that won't allow us to quit trying.

What is that mechanism?

There's this YouTube Derrida video, yes I posted
it here before, that I remember now. The person behind
the camera asks the philosopher to speak on "love."
He says,"I have nothing to say about love in general,"
demanding that she pose a question.

That is the mechanism.